Nash v Chelsea College of Art and Design
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE BUXTON |
| Judgment Date | 24 January 2002 |
| Neutral Citation | [2002] EWCA Civ 69 |
| Docket Number | C/2001/1765 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 24 January 2002 |
[2002] EWCA Civ 69
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION (ADMINISTRATIVE COURT)
(MR JUSTICE STANLEY BURNTON)
Lord Justice Buxton
C/2001/1765
MR G JONES (Instructed by Messrs Teacher Stern Selby, London, WC1R 4JH) appeared on behalf of the Appellant
The Respondent did not attend and was not represented.
This is an application for permission to appeal against the decision of Stanley Burnton J given on 20 July 2001. The judge said, and I agree, that this was a most unfortunate case. He set out the history in considerable detail in his judgment. I do not intend to seek to improve on that. Those passages have not been in any way criticised before me. I would simply say the following.
The claimant, Miss Aletta Nash, complains of the second year assessment that she received in her course at the Chelsea College of Art, the respondent. That assessment was made as long ago as May 1998, and was considered by the Board of Examiners of the College in July 1998. Miss Nash complains in substance about the procedure in that extenuating circumstances (that are not necessary to recite) have not been taken into proper account.
The College has a detailed procedure for dealing with complaints such as this. The assessment by the Board of Examiners, which was the second time that this matter has been looked at, was reviewed by what it describes as the Academic Committee of the College: who, equally, did not uphold Miss Nash's objection. However Miss Nash was successful in challenging that decision in judicial review proceedings. The decision was quashed by Elias J in May 2000 because, in his view, the Chairman of the Committee had wrongfully made a decision as to the material that should go before the Committee. The Committee was therefore ordered to consider Miss Nash's case again on 20 and 26 June 2000. As the judge said, it might have been thought that with its previous unhappy experience of this case, and of the legal system, the College and its Committee would have taken every possible step to ensure that Miss Nash had no ground whatsoever thereafter to complain about the way things were being managed. However, further complaint was made about the letter of 30 June 2000 sent to Miss Nash. That letter set out the reasons for the Committee's decision, which was unfavourable to Miss Nash. Unfortunately, as identified by the judge and by the solicitors on Miss Nash's behalf, that letter effectively gave no answer to the substantive objections raised by Miss Nash, as opposed to dealing with what she perceived to be alleged procedural difficulties in the way the examination board dealt with her case. It was the judge's view that the letter was an inadequate way of giving reasons.
After the College had been informed that proceedings were to be commenced, Mr Cina, the Head of the College (who had not been involved in the decision), wrote on 3 October 2000 listing the College's reasons for rejecting Miss Nash's substantive objections, despite legal advice that there was no duty upon the College to do so. In the judicial review proceedings, Miss Nash submitted that, in a case where reasons should be given, those reasons were not given until the letter of 3 October 2000 which post-dated the actual decision. That decision supplemented the letter of 30 June, but was not written by a member of the Committee and had not been seen by all the members of the Committee. There was evidence of the Chairman of that Committee, Mr Clive Nicholls, the Dean of the School of Design at the College, in which he says that he saw Mr Cina's version and approved it before it was sent out. In Mr Nicholls view it accurately and fully represented the terms of the Academic Committee's decision.
The contest before the judge was in the context of the well-known problems identified in the case of R v Westminster City Council, ex p Ermakov [1996] 2 All ER 302 as to whether reasons could properly be given ex post facto in the way that added to the original reasons. The judge concluded, though not by a large margin, that he should accept the letter as giving the reasons for the Committee's decision and that those reasons were in fact adequate. He set out his considerations at considerable length in paragraph 37 of his judgment. In so doing, he found considerable assistance, as I do, in the decision of Laws J, as he then was, in Northamptonshire County Council ex p D [1998] ED CR 14, in which he clearly set out the considerations that the court should have in mind in the light of previous authority. In particular, in this case, it may be noted, without discriminating between the judge's reasons, that there had been no challenge to the good faith of either Mr Cina or of Mr Nicholls. It was open to the College to deal with the matter in the way it did, and not a requirement that every member of the Committee...
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